ThisMoi

For all of the lovely folks here who are trying to improve their English grammar, I thought I'd introduce you to Grammar Girl (if you don't know about her already!). Even native speakers run into difficulties with grammar, and Grammar Girl has some really excellent tricks to help you remember some of the stranger rules.

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar

Here's a few quick and dirty tips of hers I've found incredibly useful:

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/ie-versus-eg

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/how-to-use-the-conjunction-nor

http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/using-stick-figures-to-understand-first-second-and-third-person

She also has a free podcast. I used to always listen to it in my car!

Anyway, I hope this helped someone. She helped me fix my who and whom problem

I don't mean to respond to an old post, but something happened today relevant to this topic.

I'm 40, and when I was growing up (in the US), we actually had a handwriting class as part of our normal school day. We started learning cursive in second grade, and this class was part of the curriculum all the way until the end of 6th grade.

Anyway, I have 3 children, and none of them have ever had a handwriting class. My two oldest are long graduated from at least high school, but my youngest is 12 and just started the 7th grade this month. He also has never had a handwriting class, although I've tried to teach him cursive here and there over the years. He never really caught on and never thought it was very important. UNTIL TODAY!

He just got home from school and is almost in tears because he has to write each of his spelling words five times in cursive, and he is required to write his spelling test at the end of the week in cursive.

He is sitting in front of a computer screen right now trying his best to match cursive strokes. He is very upset about this turn of events! I'm pleased, though. Cursive is important! Even though most of us use some sort of electronic device for a great deal of our communications these days, signatures are still required on all sorts of things.

Maybe this is a sign that cursive will begin being taught again at the grade school level in the US soon. Hopefully!

I couldn't get enough of A Child's Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson when I was just starting to read. After I got a little older, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle and Charlotte's Web by E.B. White were the ones I just couldn't get enough of.

Have you looked into Amazon's mturk program? I'm not sure if you can do it in your country or not. If you can, the translation HITs definitely pay much more than menial task HITs. I do know that you'll probably have to take a few qualification tests to prove your fluency, but it might be a good place to start!

I second the YouTube recommendation. Here's a lady I found that addresses exactly what you are looking for. American Accent for Japanese Speakers

Her whole channel seems to be pretty useful, actually! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDmYmMIR1b7G4ezf2JzLgRA